What the calendar looks like – oversized 11×17” pages you can actually use!

I’ve published the calendars through CafePress since 2004, so this year’s calendar marks the tenth edition. All of the photos in the calendar are from trips and trails I’ve explored over the past year.

I get a surprising number of questions about the photos, so in addition to simply announcing the 2014 calendar, this article tells a bit of the story behind the new images.

The 2014 Scenes

Cover: Sandy Headwall and Glacier from McGee Ridge

The cover photo of the Sandy Glacier headwall is really a nod to a chance encounter I had with Brent McGregor, the fearless cave explorer profiled in the Thin Ice: Exploring Mount Hood’s Glacier Caves, a recent Oregon Public Broadcasting feature. I had just posted a WyEast blog article on the program a few days prior, and happened to run into Brent and his climbing partner, Eric Guth, on the Timberline Trail that day in October.

Brent and Eric were on their way down from spending the night in the Snow Dragon glacier cave, and provided me with an amazing personal account of their adventures inside the caves. I also learned a bit of the glacier cave geography from the spot where we met atop McGee Ridge. The cover image for the calendar was taken from that spot awhile after the (now famous) ice cave explorers continued down the trail. A most memorable evening!

January: Tamanawas Falls dressed in white

The monthly scenes begin with a snowy afternoon at Tamanawas Falls in the January image (above). The photo was taken in December 2013, and stitched together from three separate photos — the first of three such composite images in this year’s calendar.

The conditions were perfect that day, and a bit deceptive, as this was the first big snowfall of the season — and thus we was able to simply hike up the trail without snowshoes, albeit with the aid of boot spikes.

Brother-in-law David taking in the magic at Tamanawas

My brother-in-law David joined me for the hike to Tamanawas Falls, celebrating his return to Oregon after spending the past thirty years living in distant places, far from the life he knew growing up here among tall trees, big mountains and countless waterfalls – the best kind of reunion!

The February image (below) is an evening scene from one of the viewpoints along the historic Bennett Pass Road. The blanket of valley fog rolled in just as the sun dropped behind the mountain ridges, making for an especially peaceful scene.

February: WyEast’s under-appreciated southeast side from near Bennett Pass

Ironically, the story behind the image is anything but quiet, as I was visiting Bennett Pass on New Years Day — apparently, along with the rest of Portland area population!

A “pristine” framing of this image suffered as a result, as the fresh blanket of snow from the previous night had already been heavily trampled by the small army of skiers and snowshoers (and their dogs) that day! Otherwise, I would have loved to included this image (below), with a pretty little noble fir in the foreground in the calendar. Maybe I should bring along a rake next time..?

Heavy ski and snowshoe traffic on New Years Day!

For the March image, I picked a mid-winter Gorge scene captured at Elowah Falls on McCord Creek, just west of Cascade Locks (below). This is another composite image, made from a total of six photos, with the goal of giving a panoramic feel that matches the immensity of the setting.

This is the finished image:

March: Elowah Falls in late winter hues

The six separate images look like this before merging:

Six photos make up the original panorama at Elowah

Once merged, I cropped the final image to fit the dimensions of the calendar:

The calendar image was then snipped from the composite image

There’s a bit of a story to this scene, too: the graceful, multi-trunked bigleaf maple framing the falls will soon succumb to the power of McCord Creek, as the stream has recently eroded the bank to the point that the main trunk of the tree is hovering over the creek, in mid-air (below).

Change is coming to this maple along McCord Creek

This section of McCord Creek has suddenly experienced a lot of erosion in the past few years, so this is part of a larger change happening to this iconic spot – much more to come as we watch the power of nature at work, and a reminder that change is constant in the natural landscape!

For April, I picked a familiar spot in the Columbia Gorge at Rowena Crest (below), where the blooming lupine and arrowleaf balsamroot frame the river and town of Lyle in the distance. It was a typically blustery day in the Gorge last spring when I visit this spot, and though the overall bloom in the east Gorge in 2013 was somewhat disappointing, the McCall Preserve at Rowena still had a very good flower show.

April: blustery winds at Rowena Crest..? Naturally!

The May image (below) is from the wonderful little loop trail at Butte Creek Falls, an gorgeous little canyon in the otherwise heavily logged foothills southwest of Mount Hood. This view shows the upper falls, a quiet, understated cascade that hides an impressive cave tucked behind the falls. The main falls of Butte Creek if just downstream.

I enjoy this trail because of the contrasts, as the approach to the trailhead passes through some of the most horrendously cut over timber corporation holdings in Oregon. By comparison, the vibrant, mossy canyon holding Butte Creek is a reminder of what we’ve lost — and hopefully will restore, someday.

Spring is waterfall season in Oregon, so the June image stays with the theme, this time countering little-known Upper Butte Creek Falls with the queen of all Oregon cascades, Multnomah Falls (below).

June: a composite photo from a very busy viewpoint

This image is the third blended photo in the 2014 calendar, this time composed of three separate images (below) taken at the perennially crowded lower overlook along the Multnomah Falls trail. As with the other composite images, my goal was to give broader context to the scene — in this case, the massive array of cliffs that surround Multnomah Falls.

Three photos came together for the Multnomah Falls image

As always, mountain scenes fill the summer months of the calendar, starting with a view of Mount Hood’s towering west face for July (below). This image was captured in mid-July, and though a bit late for the full glory of the beargrass bloom, it does capture the final phase of the bloom. This scene is from one of the hanging meadows high on the shoulder of McGee Ridge, looking into the valley of the Muddy Fork.

July: beargrass bloom in the hanging meadows above the Muddy Fork

For the August calendar scene, I chose an image from a hike to Elk Cove. It’s a bit of a repeat from past calendars, but one of my (and most everyone else, I suspect) favorite views of the mountain. The alpine bloom came late to Elk Cove this year, and still hadn’t peaked when I shot this photo in early August:

August: my annual pilgrimage to “the view” from Elk Cove

I’ve shot this scene many times, but on this particular trip several hikers passed by while I waited for the afternoon light to soften. Two groups stopped to chat and pose for me, including a pair of hiking buddies doing the Timberline Trail circuit and a family from Olympia, Washington visiting Elk Cove for the first time (below).

Round-the-mountain hikers arriving for a night at Elk Cove

This group traveled from Olympia to visit Elk Cove

Both shots let out a little secret about my favorite photo spot at Elk Cove: it’s only about ten feet off the Timberline Trail, which crosses right through the drift of western pasque flower in the foreground!

For the September scene, I picked an image of Wiesendanger Falls on Multnomah Creek (below), named for Albert Wiesendanger, a pioneering forester in the Columbia River Gorge.

September: Albert Wiesendanger earned a place name with his falls on Multnomah Creek

Most hikers are (understandably) looking upstream, toward Wiesendanger Falls, when they walk through Dutchman’s Tunnel (not a true tunnel, but more of a ledge carved into the basalt cliff) along Multnomah Creek, just below the falls.

Thus, few see this inconspicuous bronze plaque at the south end of the tunnel honoring Albert Wiesendanger:

Wiesendanger not only had an important role in shaping of the trails and campgrounds we now enjoy in the Columbia River Gorge, he also went on to lead the Keep Oregon Green campaign. He is a little-known giant in our local history, and deserves to have his story more widely told.

The October scene isn’t from a trail, but rather, a somewhat obscure dirt road high on the shoulder of Middle Mountain (below), in the Hood River Valley. I learned of this spot several years ago, and often make the bumpy side trip if I’m passing through in early evening — it’s one of the more stunning views in the area, showing off the spectacular Upper Hood River Valley at its finest.

October: The upper Hood River Valley from a lesser-known viewpoint on Middle Mountain

For November, I chose a photo of Wahclella Falls on Tanner Creek taken a year ago (below), in early November 2012. Why? Because the monsoons we experienced in September of this year really did a number on the fall colors. Foliage was battered by the winter-like weather, and trees were deprived of the normal autumn draught conditions that help put the brilliance in our fall.

November: Tanner Creek as it would normally appear in early November

The result of our cold, wet September was a very early leaf fall and generally muted fall colors, as can be seen in these views of Wahclella Falls taken from the same spot at almost the same time of year in 2012 and 2013:

Our rough September weather in 2013 was devastating to autumn foliage

Finally, a winter scene along the East Fork of the Hood River (below) wraps up the 2014 calendar as the December image. This photograph was taken from the footbridge leading to Cold Spring Creek and Tamanawas Falls, and was captured on the same day as the opening January image in this year’s calendar.

December: The East Fork Hood River in winter

Among the missing elements in this year’s calendar are scenes from the Cloud Cap area and Cooper Spur, on Mount Hood’s north side. This is largely due to the indefinite closure of the historic Cloud Cap Road, abruptly announced by the Forest Service earlier this year.

This road closure had a big impact on recreation. While it’s possible for seasoned hikers to make the much longer trek from the nearby Tilly Jane trailhead, for most (especially families and less active hikers), it means that Cooper Spur and the spectacular views of the Eliot Glacier will have to wait until another year.

Cloud Cap Road in 2010: salvage logging slash lines the road two years after the Gnarl Fire swept through in August 2008

The reason for the Cloud Cap Road closure is a bit more worrisome: five years after the Gnarl Fire roared through the area — and four years after an extensive salvage logging operation toppled hundreds of “hazard” trees along the road — the Forest Service has decided that standing trees must once again be felled in order to “protect the public”.

Oddly enough, the road remains open to hikers, skiers and cyclists — apparently because the hazardous trees only fall on cars? We can only hope that the scars from this latest “improvement” don’t further degrade the historic road, when huge piles of slash were left behind, where they still line the old road.

One that didn’t make it…

Metlako Falls (from the wrong side of the fence)

The above view of Metlako Falls on Eagle Creek was in my folder of favorite 2013 images to include in the annual calendar, but I decided to save the scene for another year. Why? Because in July, I headed up a mighty (okay, two-man) Trailkeepers of Oregon crew to clear out the brush that has blocked safe viewing of Metlako Falls for many years.

Previously, the only way to capture a photo like the one above, photographers had to step OVER the cable hand rail, and stand perilously close to the 200-foot brink dropping into the Eagle Creek Gorge. The hazard to hikers was bad enough, but the “sweet spot” for photos was so over-used that it was starting to erode the ground underneath it, potentially destabilizing the rest of the cliff-top Metlako Falls overlook.

Chris Alley was one half of the TKO crew, and the only hiker with a 16-foot pole pruner on the Eagle Creek Trail that day!

The solution was straightforward: the Gorge unit of the Forest Service approved our plan to trim the offending brush using a 16-foot pole saw. This kept us safely on the uphill side of the cable fence, with just enough reach to clip the brush.

The task at hand: trim overgrown brush and maple limbs

With my Trailkeepers partner Chris Alley along for the project, we made quick work of the offending branches on a rather hot, sticky day. After a couple hours of sawing and lopping, Metlako Falls was once again safely in view! This is a project I’d wanted to do for awhile, so it was great to finally have it sanctioned as a Trailkeepers of Oregon project.

The author: “I can see clearly now (the brush is gone)!”

Now, I’m looking forward to next spring, when I’ll head up there during the waterfall prime time to re-capture the scene — safely, this time! I’ve already been back this year, and enjoyed seeing casual hikers admiring the unobstructed falls, snapping photos on their iPhones.
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The thirteen images I chose for the 2014 calendar are from a few thousand images I’ve taken this year on close to 50 outings to Mount Hood and the Gorge! As always, the magnificent scenery only strengthened my conviction that Mount Hood should (and will!) be set aside as a National Park! Hopefully, the scenes in the calendar continue to make the case, as well.

They are large and functional, measuring 17” across by 22” tall when hung, with plenty of room for writing notes and scheduling activities. CafePress packages them carefully, with each calendar sealed against a corrugated cardboard backing for support. You can also order them with gift wrapping at additional charge.

The calendars sell for $29.99 + shipping, with about 25% of the proceeds going to support the Mount Hood National Park Campaign. They make terrific stocking stuffers (…although you’ll need an 11×17” stocking…), and CafePress now makes it even easier by offering PayPal as an option.

This week marks the five-year anniversary of my first post on the WyEast Blog, so I thought I’d share a few factoids and highlights from the past five years to mark the occasion. I started the blog as a way to provide more timely content than is possible on the Mount Hood National Park Campaign website and as a way to more actively champion the idea to anyone willing to read the articles!

It has been to my great surprise that so much traffic has come to the blog over the past five years. My articles are in long-prose format, eclectic and hyper-detailed in nature and only posted every couple weeks, so the WyEast Blog is way out of the mainstream of the post-constantly-or-die culture of the blogosphere. Yet, visits to the blog continue to grow: the following chart shows the monthly growth in traffic over just the past two years:

Dark blue shows actual visitors to the site (data that only became available in 2012) and light blue shows page views. On average, most viewers read about 1.5 pages, or from my perspective as the author, roughly ever other visitor takes a look at a second page during a visit. The chart also shows seasonal spikes of summer traffic — not something I would have expected, but more on that in a moment.

A typical day brings between 100 and 150 visitors during the off-season, and total visits are rapidly approaching 100,000 – another milestone for an oddball blog! Most of that traffic has been in the past two years.

The following chart shows monthly visitors for the full five years — with an audacious FOUR in that first month in 2008 (thanks, mom!) and about 2,500 so far this month (the green box marks the month with the most traffic in the history of the blog, with 5,651 visits in August of this year):

Equally surprising (to me) is the diversity of visitors coming to the blog. A majority is directed from search engines, but they come from all over the world. This map shows their origins for just the past week:

This map shows their origins over the life of the blog, with a surprising number of visitors from well outside the English-speaking world:

Some of that far-flung traffic is nuisance (spammers), but I suspect most of the exotic locales are explained by the most popular topics and search terms. For example, the following chart shows the most-read of the 120 articles that I’ve published over the life of the blog — and not surprisingly, the companion posts on coping with ticks and poison oak continue to be visited regularly from points far and wide:

But close behind the creepy-crawly articles are posts on the history of the Timberline Trail, one of my “proposal” articles addressing some of the problems facing Oneonta Gorge and — perhaps most surprisingly — an article on the Clackamas River Trail!

The following chart highlights the most popular search terms that have brought readers to the blog, with “Oneonta Gorge” standing head and shoulders above any other common terms that brought visitors to the site:

I deviated from the top five them for the above chart in order to include the seventh most popular search term — the WyEast Blog, itself! Of course, that could just be one person who keeps typing the same search term in, for lack of a bookmark… (mom… dad?)

The search terms that bring readers to the site make for a VERY long, and often bizarre list, with most being used just a few times, or often just once (“lost boots Paradise Park”). The weekly view (below) of search terms shows this nicely, with the expected “ticks” followed by some interesting, very specific queries:

I’m guessing the last two are from the same person — and hopefully, the tick article helped persuade that visitor to get some medical attention… yikes!

That’s probably more than enough retrospective, so if you’ve endured the charts and graphs thus far, thanks for your interest in the blog — and especially the thoughtful comments and encouraging e-mails I’ve received along the way!

Mount Hood from Bennett Pass on January 2, 2011 -- my first hike of the year

This is my third annual report on the WyEast Blog since kicking it off in November 2008. As in previous years, I posted new articles every couple of weeks in 2011. The most-read of 24 new articles in 2011 were:

Traffic on the WyEast Blog has grown in 2011 to an average of over 1,000 views per month, with a notable bump in visits occuring from July through September of this year:

The summer bump reflects the many visits made to the popular North Side Waterfall Mystery, as well as the Oneonta Gorge and Clackamas River Trail articles that continued to draw visits throughout the summer. The North Side Waterfall article was also behind the busiest day on the blog of 169 visits on August 31st.

Total visits for 2011 came to more than 14,000, a big jump over 2010, and bringing the all-time total since I started the blog to 25,781 visits. In response to the growing traffic, I moved the blog it its own URL (http://wyeastblog.org), making it easier to refer.

Most-read articles

The following is the all-time rundown of the most visited articles on the blog. The Restoring Celilo Falls article (originally posted in Feb 2009) continued to draw new traffic and lead the list. I’ve included all blog articles with 200 or more views in this summary:

Most of the traffic at the WyEast Blog is referred by search engines or links from like-minded blogs and websites, but the links to the Timberline Bike Proposal were a personal favorite: I followed several links back to various mountain biking forums and enjoyed the spirited roasting that some of my fellow bikers were having at my expense, cursing “that stupid idiot” who wrote the article in opposition to the Timberline scheme! Thankfully, a few bikers shared my opposition to the scheme, as well.

The Mark O. Hatfield Memorial Trail article from 2010 has led to some exciting brainstorming with Hatfield supporters on how to bring this concept about. To complement the article and nascent effort to make something big happen, I posted this full hike description on the Portland Hikers Field Guide:

This not only promotes the concept more widely, it also gives hikers who have made the trek a place to share their experiences (see the “trip reports” links at the bottom of the hike description). Hikers seem to love the concept, so I’m optimistic that we create an official trail with the help of a few well-placed Hatfield supporters. This is especially appropriate now, as Senator Hatfield passed away in August 2011. He will be missed.

Looking ahead to 2012

My sincere thanks to those who have subscribed to the blog and read the (admittedly eclectic) stream of articles! Watch for many more to come, as I already have something like 130 article outlines stacked up in my computer, ranging from topical issues to dreams about how things might be.

Most importantly, thanks for caring about Mount Hood and the Gorge — our future Mount Hood National Park! This uncommonly special place needs good friends like you and me more than ever.

Best wishes for 2012!

My final hike for 2011 -- a trip up the Eagle Creek Trail with my good friend David on December 31

The WyEast Blog has a new, shorter URL as of today — www.wyeastblog.org — with the goal of making it easier to find, and to underscore the non-profit mission of the Mount Hood National Park Campaign. The old URL will continue to work indefinitely, but the new address will make it a little easier to find the blog, or share the address with others.

Mount Hood on a magical afternoon above McNeil Point last August, one of my photo-trek highlights of the year

November marks the one-year anniversary of the WyEast Blog, so I will indulge with a few reflections on the blog and how I intend to carry it forward as part of the larger Mount Hood National Park Campaign.

The unifying theme is the national park campaign, and blog has, indeed, had a significant impact on traffic at the main website (which was also revamped in late 2008, in tandem with the start-up of the blog). This was the primary objective in starting the blog, so I’m pleased with the response thus far.

For the first several months, I didn’t advertise the blog at all — but it slowly picked up readers as the scope of articles became evident. From the beginning, the blog was designed in a magazine format, with lots of images and topics ranging from science, history and recreation to politics and commentary.

By mid-year, the site was logging about 200 views per month, but in July I posted a link to the site from my PortlandHikers.org signature, and the resulting boost in traffic is evident (see chart, above). The blog has been recording more than 300 views per month since. I was a bit anxious about taking this step, since I have been fairly low-key about the Mount Hood National Park project in my work with Portland Hikers, but the response has been very positive.

I had planned to write 3-4 articles per month when I started the blog, and have settled closer to three per month, with a total of 34 articles published since the first post. One surprise has been the response to individual articles. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason to the topics that are interesting to others (all of them are interesting to me, naturally!), though the most popular topics are an encouraging mix of natural and cultural history topics and more challenging policy critiques that I didn’t expect to resonate with readers.

The top article on the list was the Parkdale Lava Flow piece, and I admit, this comes as a bit of a surprise. As a geoscientist by training, the lava flow is of great interest to me, but I’m excited to find that others are equally intrigued by this little-known spectacle. That bodes well for its protection, and perhaps even improved public access for adventuresome visitors.

The many visits to the two-part article on the Boundary Clear Cut were also a pleasant surprise, and underscore the ongoing interest in federal forest policy — the Fire Forests of the Cascades article also ranked well in views, for example.

The article that drew the most commentary was a bold call to decommission The Dalles Dam and restore Celilo Falls. The contributors were particularly thoughtful and articulate in sharing their own ideas for realizing this vision, and they reaffirmed my own belief that big ideas are a necessary avenue to achieving environmental reforms and building public consensus for change (and thus the Mount Hood National Park Campaign).

Things to Come

In the coming year, I will continue to publish topical articles related to Mount Hood and the Columbia Gorge, and have at least 50 topics in various states of research and development. My early concern that I would somehow run out of new and interesting topics is no longer, as each article I’ve written has spawned a couple others.

I will also be spotlighting some of the Mount Hood National Park concepts a bit more in the coming year, in the spirit of getting those “big ideas” out there, and stimulating an outside-the-box look at an area we all love and want to protect and restore.

Thanks to all for reading the blog over the past year — thanks for putting up with my periodic typos and run-on sentences, and thanks for the personal comments and encouragement along the way. I’ll do my best to continue to improve the site in the years to come!